Google Adds Protein to Its Recommendations
December 28, 2011
Here goes Google, buying rather than innovating. Again. CNET News reports, “Google Gobbles up Restaurant Recommendation App Alfred.” Created by Clever Sense, Alfred was released for the iPhone in July. Google has now released a free version for Android.
The app studies the user’s restaurant choices, then uses online reviews and “other analysis” to recommend similar locations. There’s a cute minute-long video from Clever Sense here. Writer Jay Greene clarifies what makes Alfred special:
“Unlike better-known and more widely used rivals such as Yelp and Urbanspoon, Clever Sense uses artificial intelligence to find customers with similar tastes, then offers recommendations based on their dining choices.
It’s the kind of service–one that relies on complex algorithms to arrive at relevant results–that is right up Google’s alley.
Indeed. And if Google didn’t have to bother developing the software, all the better.
Clever Sense was founded by tech highbrows Babak Pahlavan and Nima Asgharbeygi. The Clever Sense Platform that powers Alfred combines two engines. The Extraction Engine curates unstructured crawled data; from there, it extracts concepts and learns similarities. The Serendipity Engine, though, is at the core; it is the part that learns user preferences. The company assures us that the data used to draw these conclusions is stored securely.
Cynthia Murrell, December 28, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
New York Times Does the Filene Basement Thing
December 27, 2011
Newspapers used to produce oodles of cash. Now most smaller and regional newspapers are walking a knife edge. I just read about the fire sale at the New York Times. The gray lady dumped a bundle of newspapers at a Filene basement type price. What happened to Filene’s? Well, check it out.
The article is “Times Co. Agrees to Sell Regional Newspaper Group”. The price for 16 newspapers is alleged to be $143 million. Not quite the $1 that Newsweek commanded, but a deal nevertheless.
What will the gray lady do with the cash? Maybe go shopping for some new digital duds. Will the bits and bytes return the gray lady to the apex of excellence? Might be a long shot. New president needed. New head of digital stuff needed. New products and services needed. Quite a few needs.
Stephen E Arnold, December 27, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
The AOL Shuffle
December 27, 2011
Cyber space gossip: more trouble at AOL? Crunched declares, “AOL Looking for New Huffpo Media Group President.” Blogger Michael Arrington admits that the news is “being whispered,” not official, but his sources say AOL has engaged recruiter Spencer Stuart to find a new business leader for the Huffington Post Media Group. AOL bought Huffpo earlier this year.
Arianna Huffington, founder of the media group, is now running the business side as well as the editorial side since AOL’s Jon Brod was reassigned. Arrington finds the reported change in the chain-of-command to be the juiciest part. The write up asserts:
By far the most interesting part of all this, though, is it’s not clear that Arianna Huffington is aware that the new position will report to Tim Armstrong, not Huffington. Whatever happens, I’m pretty sure I won’t be getting my old job back.
I hope Arrington doesn’t actually want his old TechCrunch job back. He seems to have pretty thoroughly burned that bridge. Just saying. One thing is for sure: Googlers make interesting managers.
Cynthia Murrell, December 27, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Google Caught in Currents: Flipboard and Zite Row Harder
December 27, 2011
Google has gained international recognition for creating innovative software that has transformed the role of search engine’s as we know it. With this reputation in mind, I was surprised to hear that Thursday’s release of Currents, Google’s news-reading app, has proven to be more than a little disappointing.
According to the Matthew Ingram’s recent Gigaom article “Google Doesn’t Seem to Get How Media Works Now,” much of the coverage of the new app have compared it to existing tablet and iPhone news-readers like Flipboard and Zite. Unfortunately, while Google Currents is superficially similar to these other services, there are some significant differences.
Ingram writes:
Google’s app, while well-designed in many ways, lacks much of the polish and user-interface elements that make Flipboard so compelling (to me at least). And at least in my limited usage of it so far, it doesn’t even manage to rise to the level that Zite provides…It’s entirely possible Google’s app will improve over time, and it does offer some interesting features — such as the ability to sync the content you’ve read between devices — but I still think it’s missing some crucial aspects.
What is the deal Google? has the search giant become dull, normal and slow on the uptake? or just indifferent?
Jasmine Ashton, December 27, 2011
Sponsored by
Chicago Sun-Times to Charge Online
December 19, 2011
In order to generate revenue from online content, a vendor must have a critical mass of digital information. Some of that information can be fluff, but a chunk should be what’s called “must have” content. Newspapers perceive themselves as having “must have” content. Most don’t and those with must have content have burned the fudge.
As most readers (including our two or three) have started getting their news online instead of reaching for the paper in the morning, print newspapers have been suffering.
Signs of this change are obvious in Chicago; The Chicago Sun-Times will begin charging customers to view content on their websites. In the Huffington Post article “Chicago Sun-Times Pay Wall: Paper to Charge Online Readers,” Sun-Times Media Chairman Jeremy Halbreich states, “It is certainly award-winning content and we need to find new ways to support it.” The article also tells us:
The announcement arrives one day after another round of layoffs at the paper, which Halbreich called the ‘final piece’ of 18 months of staffing reductions, Crain’s Chicago Business reports. Sun-Times Media has handed down hundreds of layoffs over the past two years.
In the same article, Sun Times movie critic Roger Ebert says he is upset with the pay wall concept and I agree. Ebert claims that instead of his reviews gathering dust in a pile, they are being read globally and daily online. Charging for online content will only cause readers to stray elsewhere to sites where they can get unlimited free information. Right now, the Sun Times is exempting mobile apps from the fees, which I think they should reconsider as an alternative to the pay wall. But I’m just a mere Kentucky gosling, I may be off on my business advice.
The big goose is not uncertain. The newspaper is likely to earn more from a bake sale than trying to replace the print based ad model with a pay wall. The big goose is, of course, Stephen E Arnold, our beloved leader.
Andrea Hayden, December 19, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
—
Gray Lady Limping: A Troubled New York Times?
December 16, 2011
I don’t want to draw parallels between the management shifts at Thomson Reuters and the New York Times. Let me document the fact that another semi-surprise hit the struggling New York Times. Navigate to “NY Times CEO exiting, without Explanation.”
The Times Co gave no explanation for Robinson’s sudden departure, which caught analysts as well as company insiders by surprise. Speculation among industry observers and the analyst community centered on the company’s faltering stock price, which has declined more than 80 percent since Robinson was appointed CEO in December 2004. This year alone, shares are down nearly 25 percent, a performance that has frustrated investors.
Also interesting was the departure of Martin Nisenholtz, the person who has matched the dismal performance of the Financial Times’s online services. After pulling the New York Times from LexisNexis, the New York Times demonstrated that it was unable to generate big dough when it came to leveraging its brand in the online world. I view the misguided handling of the LexisNexis deal as the first benchmark in the Times’s fascinating financial decline. Business school case study anyone: LexisNexis to the first Times’s online service to the current line up of services to the fumbling of its own indexing to the handling of About.com to today. Yowza. I am glad I am in rural Kentucky, semi retired, hopeless confused, and no longer working in the newspaper industry. Anyone hear the sound of dead trees falling in the forest? When you walk alone and get lost, one can spend quite a while in the wilderness. Watch out. Here comes another dead tree falling.
Stephen E Arnold, December 16, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Thumbs Up for ReadCube Web Reader
December 14, 2011
Google’s new news reader, which strikes us as a “me too” type product, is getting lots of attention.
We’ve found a nifty tool that lets you interact with your PDFs. Designed for researchers, ReadCube Web Reader lets you highlight and add notes to PDF documents. It also helps you find articles through a search feature that accesses Google Scholar, PubMed, or any library of documents that you import. I could wish for more search options, but perhaps they’re on the way; it’s still in beta, after all.
The application learns your interests over time, and will suggest online articles published within a specified time frame. It will even go find more information about your article, if it’s available.
The folks at Labtiva, who developed the software, aim to “make the world of research more accessible and connected.” On the startup’s about page, we learned from the write up:
Our mission is to improve the pace of scientific discovery. ReadCube was started by a researcher and a computer scientist to address the challenges faced by scientists. What started in a Harvard College dorm room as a tool to help organize and find scientific papers quickly turned into something rather more.
Now the team has expanded beyond the Boston area and hopes their innovation will help researchers around the globe.
I downloaded the beta version and played with it a bit. It’s intuitive and sports a clean design. I’m curious to see what it will decide my interests are after I’ve imported some more articles. It’s definitely handy to be able to highlight and make notes right on the PDF, rather than creating a separate Word document.
Kudos to the Labtiva team; let’s see where they go from here.
Cynthia Murrell, December 12, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Jungle Logic? How about Jungle Growth?
December 13, 2011
Let me be upfront. I am not a professional writer. I am not a “real” journalist or story-telling consultant. I am a semi retired person living in rural Kentucky. I know my limits, and I know when another is testing those limits.
I read in the dead tree edition of The New York Times this morning (December 13, 2011), an article on page A 29, “Amazon’s Lost Jungle.” The author is Richard Russo. I looked him up in Bing and learned that he is a “real” writer. You can get more information about him at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Russo. I was disappointed that the dead tree edition of the New York Times did not include some basic information about the author, but that’s what sets dead tree publishers apart from the faux folks who write in blogs like Beyond Search. I am supposed to know Mr. Russo. I told you I had limits.
Amazon has been making headlines. First, there was the Kindle Fire, which was supposed to be an Apple iPod killer. The gizmo is an okay reader. The “iPad killer” part is a non starter. Second, there has been a flurry of information on podcasts, including Adam Carolla’s comedy program, about Amazon’s offering authors money to publish a book with Amazon in place of a New York outfit. Third, there’s The New York Times’s article by Mr. Russo.
I want to focus on that write up.
The hook for Amazon’s Lost Jungle is the cash back for buying from Amazon, not a brick and mortar store front. There are not many of those left in Harrod’s Creek. WalMart, Costco, and BestBuy took care of that. What the big boxes did not crush, Kroger and convenient stores mostly eliminated. Need a vacant store front? Harrod Creek’s for you.
The article recounts via quotations from authors various views of the shift from paper to digital content. The observations are interesting, and I quite liked the phrase “scorched earth capitalism.” Here’s the passage I marked with a question mark:
Like just about everybody I’ve talked to about it, I first attributed Amazon’s price-comparison app to arrogance and malevolence, but there’s also something bizarrely clumsy and wrong-footed about it. Critics may appear weak today, but they may not be tomorrow, and if the wind shifts, Amazon’s ham-fisted strategy has the potential to morph into a genuine Occupy Amazon movement. And even if the company is lucky and that doesn’t happen, what has it really gained? The fickle gratitude of people who will have about as much loyalty to Amazon tomorrow as they do today to Barnes & Noble, last year’s bully? This is good business? Is it just me, or does it feel as if the Amazon brass decided to spend the holidays in the Caribbean and left in charge of the company a computer that’s fallen head over heels in love with its own algorithms?
I think, just guessing I suppose, that Amazon is “bad” somehow. Amazon is successful because people find value in what the firm does. Is Amazon supposed to behave differently with regard to books. In its own way, Amazon is just doing what comes naturally to 21st century, information based companies.
I have three observations:
- Amazon is going to get bigger and more invasive. Mr. Bezos has a vision which may be as all encompassing as the Apple or Google view of what the firms can accomplish.
- Books are going to face an uphill battle. I know that in certain demographics books are hot tamales, but in certain demographics so are vinyl records. Unfortunately the big world of money is not based on looking at the world through niche colored glasses.
- Consumers in the US are into video. Now I know that I like books, but I am old and woefully out of step with the 20 somethings with whom I am sometimes forced to work. The world is video and embedded devices which pump connectivity direct to the brain. Watch for it in the next 10 years.
The “jungle logic” is not operative in the digital world. Think in terms of natural monopolies which attempt to embrace broad expanses of information, information services, and content outputs. The law of the jungle is a lion eats man thing. The law of the digital Amazon is closer to uncontrolled cellular growth colonizing a host. Without meaningful regulation and management common sense, we are looking at some unpleasant, large, and ultimately unhealthy growths. Call the doctor. I just went to voicemail and I have to listen because the menu choices have changed.
Stephen E Arnold, December 13, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Thomson Reuters and Innovation: Oxymoron?
December 9, 2011
Whoa, Nellie! I read “Thomson Reuters Selected by UK Government to Help Support Entrepreneurs and New Business Start-Ups.” Quite a surprise. Thomson Reuters is not a master of innovation. Yet here is the UK tapping the giant $13 billion, no growth and narrowing margins outfit for a key role in UK business creativity. Thomson Reuters is a a merger which has mostly disappointed stakeholders. Some individual units are innovative; for example, WestlawNext after years of gestation has improved legal search. But other Thomson Reuters’ units are struggling to make technology work. In my opinion, Thomson Reuters focuses on hitting financial targets. If that’s innovation, well, okay. I just think that consistent creativity is more than managing hundreds of look alike products and services like an investment portfolio.
Here’s the passage that caught my attention:
The new online resources feature more than 100 videos produced by Thomson Reuters in addition to other e-learning tools containing new material for pre-start-ups and start-ups. The short 3-10 minute videos focus on the full range of issues that those starting up a business need to consider.
Videos. Are these the videos which Thomson Reuters will put on the YouTube Thomson Reuters’ channel? If so, this is a remarkable shift from doing to viewing. More is needed.
Maybe with the massive management shake up–which is the fourth in 30 months–Thomson Reuters can do innovation, not reorganization? See this Computerworld UK story about more management slip sliding away.
Stephen E Arnold, December 9, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
The Future of Computing: Forget Search?
December 6, 2011
I opened my dead tree version of the New York Times a few minutes ago. I noticed an insert called “Science Times: The Future of Computing.” You may be able to find the December 6, 2011, story at this link. No promises, however.
I found the collection of articles and essays interesting. I suppose “interesting” is a poor word choice. The collection covers start ups, the Africa meme, quantum computing, artificial intelligence (an oxymoron I have heard), online instruction (bad news for some traditional educational materials’ business models I believe), a “programmable universe” (another notion which would be fun to discuss in Philosophy 101), biocomputing, security, open source, and a look at how computing is so important.
I have zero inputs to these polished, shaped, and New York mid-town write ups. The point of the exercise, I believe, was finding the buttons to push at General Electric to get the two page spread which told me:
We power. We are making energy independence a reality. From cutting edge, think film solar panels to advanced gas turbines, we created the high-tech machines that create over a quarter of the world’s energy…
My reaction to the collection of essays in the “special” section was three fold.
First, search, findability, and information access are not concepts which made the starting team in the articles and essays. In fact, I had a tough time locating the link to the special section itself, but that type of intellectual exercise is not one that concerns most of the traditional publishing companies covering technology. The collection and its inserted advertisement seem to lack an integrating hook. In my world, the notion of integration is a pretty big idea.
Second, the special section lacked a message. After working through the “real” outputs from “real” writers, I wondered what might have been done to string these gems on a necklace. The reader would then have been able to enjoy each gem and marvel at the beauty of the necklace. Someone in that Philosophy 101 class would have offered up gestalt, but not the addled goose. I just know when a collection lacks unity.
Third, is GE the “right” advertiser. I read the ad and asked myself two questions:
- Isn’t the solar industry in a bit of a tail spin? Forget Solyndra. There are other economic forces which prevent my neighbors from kicking the gas and traditional electric company approach for solar technology.
- The energy point baffled me. I kept wondering who supplied the Fukushima reactors? I mean there were fuel pools to the left and fuel pools to the right. Then there were some fuel rods on the roof, almost out of sight.
Interesting special section. Too bad search did not make the cut. It would have been interesting to read what the public relations firms for Google, Microsoft, and Yandex (Blekko) would have said about the future. I would also have enjoyed a write up by Jon Kleinberg, whose team has found some interesting information in posted Flickr pictures. But with search on the outs in the New York knowledge value world, I will just put my fins in the water and take a paddle around the pond filled with mine run off water. None of that coal has anything to do with certain large firms which produce “over a quarter of the world’s energy.” I will consult a mobile device and run a query. The system will “know” what I want better than I do. Artificial intelligence. Just great. Just not search and retrieval or research. Who needs research?
Stephen E Arnold, December 6, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
